Disability and the Return of Eugenics and the Poor Law
Open to UM Community!
Throughout the 20th Century and the first quarter of the 21st, U.S. disability policy increasingly pursued the goals of equality, inclusion, integration, and empowerment for people with disabilities. Moving away from the eugenic principles that dominated the first part of this period, policy increasingly treated disability as something to be accommodated rather than eliminated, and disabled people as folks who should be supported to live full lives in the community.
But recent events — punitive responses to mental illness and homelessness at the state and federal levels, the dramatic retrenchment of Medicaid and other support programs during the past few months, and others — threaten to return us to the world of the Eugenics Era and the English Poor Laws before that, in which disability is treated as a drain on society and those with disabilities are to be highly regulated.
This lecture will elaborate on these points.
Since 2018, Hal and Carol Kohn and the Kohn Charitable Trust have committed a total of $17 million to the Ford School to establish the Kohn Collaborative for Social Policy, a hub that will catalyze interdisciplinary research and policy impact to promote social equity and inclusion for all U.S. residents. The collaborative consists of three pillars: Kohn Professors, Kohn Scholars, and policy impact. The Arlene Susan Kohn Professor of Social Policy is one of five Kohn professorships, specifically to support research that contributes to policies advancing the rights of disabled individuals in the United States. It was named in honor of Hal’s twin sister, born with Down syndrome, who passed away in 2016.
Speaker Bio:
Samuel Bagenstos is the Arlene Susan Kohn Professor of Social Policy. at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and Frank G. Millard Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School.
From June 2022 to December 2024, he served as General Counsel to the Department of Health and Human Services. He played a key role in advancing and implementing policies across the Department, including pursuing several initiatives on abortion and reproductive rights; crafting and defending the first-ever Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program; drafting and issuing major rules on civil rights, health privacy, Medicare and Medicaid, drug advertising, the regulation of “lab-developed” medical tests and of food safety, the treatment of unaccompanied migrant children in HHS care, the treatment of LGBT kids in the foster care system, and many other issues; advancing marijuana rescheduling; advising and defending the Food and Drug Administration’s tobacco enforcement program; and working with the Department of Justice on litigation involving HHS, including significant abortion rights, free speech, and tobacco regulation cases in the Supreme Court.
From Inauguration Day 2021 to June 2022, he served as General Counsel to the Office of Management and Budget. There, he worked on President Biden’s Day One executive orders; helped respond to COVID, including implementing several crucial aid programs; responded to regulations adopted by the prior administration just before the inauguration and helped advance the new administration’s regulations on labor, health, the environment, and much else; helped craft and implement the American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and what became the Inflation Reduction Act; and assisted in developing two annual budgets, along with advising the entire Executive Branch on issues of appropriations law and administrative law.
In an earlier stint on leave from the University, from 2009 to 2011, Bagenstos was an appointee in the US Department of Justice, where he served as the principal deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights, the number two official in the Civil Rights Division. There, he helped promulgate the 2010 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) regulations—the first comprehensive update of those regulations since they were first issued in 1991—and led the reinvigoration of the Civil Rights Division’s enforcement of the US Supreme Court’s decision in Olmstead v. L.C., which guarantees people with disabilities the right to live and receive services in the most integrated setting appropriate. He led the negotiations of significant Olmstead settlements with the states of Delaware and Georgia, which guarantee appropriate, community-based services to thousands of people with disabilities. He also personally argued major cases in federal district courts and courts of appeals.
As an academic, Bagenstos has published articles in journals such as the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, the California Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the Cornell Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, and many others. He also has published two books: Law and the Contradictions of the Disability Rights Movement (Yale University Press, 2009) and Disability Rights Law: Cases and Materials (Foundation Press, originally published in 2010 but now working on the fourth edition), and he has written articles for nonacademic audiences in publications such as Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, The American Prospect, The Washington Monthly, Slate, and The New Republic.
Bagenstos is actively involved in public and community affairs, both in Ann Arbor and statewide. Pursuant to an appointment by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, he served as chair of the Michigan Employment Relations Commission, the state agency that enforces the rights of public employees to unionize and collectively bargain. Pursuant to an appointment by Mayor Christopher Taylor, he served as a member of the Ann Arbor Housing Commission. He has also been a frequent cooperating attorney with the ACLU of Michigan.